


Echoes

by SilverinGray



Category: The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-08-30 01:21:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16755133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverinGray/pseuds/SilverinGray
Summary: After what happens at the House, there's a lot of things that need to happen. Luke is in the hospital, their dad's death needs to be dealt with, and the siblings need to come together as four instead of five. And mostly, they need to heal.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Theo's POV, but mostly about Steve? Sorry about that, I think he's my favorite. No bashing of any character, they are all kind of emotionally unavailable assholes who love each other (my fav). Lots of sibling bonding.  
> No major TWs, but Theo is pretty heavily dissociating for some of it, something I think she does in show, and that's described.  
> I'm super slow at updating, but it should get finished.  
> It's in present tense, just a btw.

By the time I see Steve stride through the hospital doors, the adrenaline has seeped out of me and I feel boneless and numb. A nurse had come out and told us that Luke’s prognosis was good but that he was not completely out of the woods after what had probably been less than an hour since they had whisked him away, but had felt like days. I had expected to feel relief, but mostly I felt tired. I struggle to my feet to meet my brother anyway, and as soon as we’re close enough he breathes out my name like a prayer and hugs me roughly. I almost reflexively pull away because I don’t know if I can bear feeling what he’s feeling, but he’s carefully only touching the parts of me that are covered with clothes, his hands clenching in the fabric of my jacket.. He lets go just as abruptly and turns to Shirley, this time leaning over and turning his face so it’s pressed into the juncture of her shoulder and neck when he hugs her. I can see his hands shaking, trembling so hard that for a moment I wonder how he managed to drive all the way here without crashing - Shirley’s hands had been steady on the wheel the whole way here with Luke and me in the backseat, but she still had hit a few curbs on the terrifying ride. When he pulls away he wipes his face roughly, asks after Luke in a voice that’s breathless and as shaky as his hands. He only nods when Shirley repeats what the nurse had said - the next few hours are critical, but they are optimistic.

  
That’s when I notice that Dad is not with him.

  
Shirley must notice then too, because she leans to look around him and out the hospital’s sliding glass doors, and then looks at me. We both look at Steve and he must see the question posed at our lips because his mouth is wavering until he bites down hard on his lip, hard enough that I expect to see blood.

  
“Dad-Dad’s dead.” Is all he says. He sways on his feet and Shirley says something but I can’t hear anything above the rushing in my ears and the world looks narrow and dim and someone is pressing me into an uncomfortable plastic chair. I close my eyes and count and do a breathing exercise I often give to my clients - box breathing - until the ocean is quiet again.

  
When I open my eyes Shirley is crouching in front of both of us, having corralled us into two chairs next to each other, one hand on Steve’s shoulder as he practically hyperventilates with his head between his knees.

  
“Are you okay?” She asks me quietly. Her face is hard, the lines around her mouth deeper than they usually are. I nod. I don’t know if I’m okay but I can breathe again, which is more than Steve can say. I lean forward and start counting my breathes again but out loud this time, just loud enough that Steve can hear me. It takes a few rounds of the exercise but eventually he sits up and breathes with me until when I stop he doesn’t immediately start breathing too quickly again.

  
“Sorry.” He mutters. He looks tired and old, and so does Shirley, and I’m sure I don’t look much better. All of our clothes are wrinkled and covered in dust and who knows what else and I feel closer to my siblings than I have since we were young.  
“What happened?” Shirley asks, and Steve shakes his head. His voice is quiet and hoarse when he answers her.

  
“He...he got us out. Killed himself. There’s a lot to explain, I don’t-” He stops, buries his face in his hands. “I don’t know how to tell you everything.” He says, and he sounds broken. Shirley stands up and looks ready to demand he tell us everything, and I almost let her. I’m tired of secrets, tired of Steve refusing to talk about anything important and tired of not having all the pieces to the story. But I reach out and grab her sleeve and she shuts her mouth with an audible click of teeth. This isn’t the time, not here in the waiting room with people across the room casting us curious looks, not with Steve’s shoulders shaking and dark circles so deep around his eyes it looks like he’s been hit in the face, not when Shirley and I don’t look much better.

  
“Should we call the police? What do we do about Dad? His body?” Nobody answers my question for a second. I think through our options. It would be stupid to go back tonight for him, but I hate the thought of his body there alone. Well, not alone I guess, but I still don’t want to think about his body in the House.

  
“We can call in the morning. That he had a heart attack, all the stress. He was old, I know he had some heart issues.” Shirley shrugs, drops down heavily into one of the seats behind her.

“What about Luke? If they ask what happen to him. Did the doctors ask?” Steve asks. He hasn’t lifted his head, talking to the floor in between his feet.

  
“I told them he injected rat poison. They saw the marks on his arms, the track marks. They look old but...they didn’t really ask anything after that.” There is a beat of uncomfortable silence. I’m thinking of seeing those track marks for the first time, the way he had yanked on his sleeves, embarrassed and angry. He had been young, maybe 19, but I knew had had been using other drugs long before that.

  
Nobody speaks for a long while after that. Shirley eventually remembers that she needs to tell Kevin where we are and goes outside to call him. Steve doesn’t react to her quiet explanation as she leaves, staring blankly at the floor instead. I think about talking to him, comforting him in some way or asking about Dad, but can’t dredge up the motivation to form actual words. Instead I lean my head against his shoulder. He jolts a little, but then I feel him shift so I’m more comfortable against him. Wordlessly, we wait that way, drawing what little comfort there is from the warmth of each other.

 

* * *

 

The sun is just peeking over the horizon when a nurse comes out to tell us we can see Luke. She says he’s sleeping but that they think he should be okay. We follow her like ducks down a hallway and to his room, gaining a few looks from others in the hallway. We must look strange, Steve still in his funeral suit, all of us dirty and wild eyes and disheveled.

  
Luke’s hospital room looks like any other. It’s dim, early morning sunlight just barely making its way through the blinds, and quiet except for the beeping of the machines around him. There’s not as many as I expected, just a heart monitor and one other I don’t know the purpose for. He has an IV in his arm and a nasal canal for oxygen, one of the oxygen readers clipped to his finger. Otherwise there’s nothing attached to him. I had expected him to be covered in tubes and wires after what he had been like at the house, but he looks almost normal.

  
“Fuck.” Steve whispers, and he leans heavily against the door frame. “He’s okay. He’s okay.” He says, presumably to himself because he’s not looking at me or Shirley but has his eyes fixed on Luke. Shirley just steps around him and goes straight to Luke, picking up the hand without the IV and holding it between both of hers. I sink down into the chair near his bed. I want to touch him, to really feel that he’s alive, but am afraid of what else I’ll feel.

  
We all stare at him, breathe in the slightly too sterile hospital air and stew, caught in our thoughts. Finally, Steve speaks.

  
“We need…” He stops, clears his throat and I see his hands clench into fists and then relax, over and over. “We need to call about Dad. I can...I can go to the House, call them from there.”

  
“Don’t go inside.” Shirley says sharply. We both look at her, and she looks hard, face set in stone. Steve nods.

  
“I won’t. I don’t even...I don’t think I could.” Steve huffs out what might be a laugh but sounds more like a sob, stuffs his hands deep into his pockets. He looks scared all of a sudden, scared and young and he keeps staring at Luke like if he looks away, Luke will disappear and this time we won’t be able to find him.

  
“I’ll go with you.” I tell him, suddenly realizing I haven’t said anything in a long while when my voice comes out hoarse. I don’t want to go, don’t want to be anywhere near the House ever again, but don’t want to picture him going there alone either. Don’t want to picture him there alone after Dad died, driving to the hospital with nobody but the ghosts to keep him company. Steve looks surprised at my offer but agrees easily, giving me a tight smile. He probably didn’t want to go back alone either.

  
“Call me right after.” Shirley makes us promise. It only takes us a few minutes to get out of the room and back to the car, and soon I’m sitting in the passenger seat of Steve’s rental. Steve himself is sitting in the driver’s seat, staring at the keys he’s holding clasped in his hands.

  
“Steve?”

  
“I don’t know if I can do this.” He whispers. He drops his chin to his chest, breathes shakingly out through his mouth. His hands are shaking around the keys, and he’s holding them so tightly that his knuckles are white.

  
“It’s almost over. I’ll be there with you.” I reach over and touch his wrist, noticing for the first time that my own fingers are trembling. When was the last time any of us ate, or drank anything that wasn’t bad hospital coffee or alcohol? I can’t remember, but I don’t feel hungry. Just empty, and a far off echo of what is probably fear and grief and relief and other things that I will have to deal with eventually but not right now, not until everything that had to be done was done.

  
Steve takes one more wavering breath before starting the car, beginning the drive back to the House. Last night, it had felt like it had taken hours to get from there to the hospital, but in the weak light of the morning it only takes 20 minutes. We drive silently most of the way, Steve intent on the road while I stare at the scenery outside the window.

  
The tires crunch over the gravel as we near the House. Steve stops the car before the open gate and we both stare down the road, the car ticking as it cools. I open the car door and stand up, let the cool morning air wash over me, let it wake me up from the haze that the drive lulled me into. Behind me, my brother does the same, pulling out his phone. I hear him make the relatively short phone call but don’t listen very closely, catching a few short phrases. “Everybody at the hospital...realized dad wasn’t there….heart problems….” and then a lot of talking on the other end, Steve mmhming and saying yes or no, thanking the person on the other end. When he hangs up, he walks over to me.

  
“They said they’d send out the Coroner’s van, and someone to take a statement but that it should only take a few minutes. He didn’t...he didn’t sound as surprised as I thought he would.” Steve chuckles, the sound bitter and dark. “Guess he wasn’t surprised that another Crain went there to die.” He says, and I close my eyes against the thought. Steve murmurs an apology almost immediately but I wave him off. It’s a painful sentence, but not untrue, and honestly it’s not something that I couldn’t see myself saying. I sit next to Steve on the hood of the car, our shoulders touching. It’s cold, the sun warming up the air but it’s still early October in New England and the warmth of Steve’s body is welcome. We’re facing away from the House so I can pretend like it’s any random stretch of road, and it’s almost peaceful.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The siblings work on figuring everything else out the day after the House

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And it continues - sorry for the wait.  
> Reviews make me write faster. :)

Luke has woken up by the time we get back to the hospital, bearing bags of cheeseburgers because by the time the coroner and the police had come and gone, it was after eleven. The questions, true to the police’s word, bad been brief but still uncomfortable. The officer had been surprised and unsure what to do when we both refused to go back into the House to show him where dad was, eventually him and the coroner going alone. Steve and I had gotten back into the car and waited there, pretending like we weren’t both silently panicking the whole time. I didn’t think the House would do anything to them, not really. I didn’t think it had much power, much life, during the day, nor did I think it would be very interested in a couple of random visitors. Still though, that didn’t stop my heart from beating too hard in my chest until the coroner’s van crept slowing back into view, announcing their arrival by the crunch of the wheels on the road.

It hadn’t been as bad as I feared though, and Shirley texted us on the way back to tell us she had told Luke about dad. I still feel bad about the surge of relief I felt at the news, but not enough to not be grateful that Shirley had done it. 

Luke looks better than before already when we walk into his room, his eyes brighter and clear even with the dark shadows under them, the stubble lining his jaw. He smiles at me and Steve, reaching out a hand to us. I hesitate, but grab onto him, feel the rasp of his dry skin against mine. I flinch automatically, but all I get is a rush of relief and warmth and love from him. When Steve goes to him, he stoops down and hugs Luke, pressing his head onto Luke’s collarbone for just a moment, and I see him breathe in the smell of him. 

“I’m so glad you’re okay.” He whispers. And then Shirley kicks my ankle and grabs for the bag of food, breaking the moment. 

We stay there all day, occasionally leaving for coffee or snacks or just a jaunt around the hospital to stretch out sore muscles. Nurses bustle in and out every couple of hours, and a doctor stops by to tell us Luke can leave tomorrow if all stays well - he seems baffled by both what could have happened and why he’s doing so much better so quickly, but when we don’t ask any questions he leaves us to it. We watch tv, watching game shows and competing to see who can answer the most questions correctly - Steve and Luke are both surprisingly good at it. Steve shrugs, saying he reads a lot.

“There’s not a whole lot else to watch at some of the rehabs and halfway houses.” Luke explains about his own talents. There’s a moment of awkwardness, all of us seeming to remember one of the reasons we’ve been fractured the past years. 

“See, I knew those places were good for more than just the actual rehab.” Shirley teases, and though the words could have been barbed and meant to sting in another tone, her voice is light and she smiles at Luke. He smiles back.

The nurses kick us out once the end to visiting hours have come and gone, insisting we go and eat dinner that’s not from a vending machine and go get some sleep. We all hug Luke as we file out and he blinks back tears, though we all pretend like we don't notice. The three of us are silent until we reach the parking lot. It’s almost dark, the air still and a little chilly. 

“So a hotel then?” Steve asks, shaking the car keys in his hand so they jingle. He’s mostly looking at Shirley, and I turn to look at her too. She hesitates just a second, before agreeing. 

“I’m sure the kids would be asleep before we got back anyway.” She says. She doesn’t mention Kevin, and Steve and I both notice but Steve doesn’t say anything, just nods. I try to catch Shirley’s eye but she’s not looking at me, striding towards the car. It doesn’t feel like we are fighting anymore, not with what happened in the car and in the House, but I still make a mental note to check in with her later when we’re alone. There’s still her relationship with Kevin to worry about, and I want her to know that I care about that even if she doesn’t want to have a full on conversation about it.

So we go to one of the chain hotels lining the highway. I’m relieved that we aren’t leaving Luke, though I can feel the urge to put miles between me and the House thrumming under my skin. The place is deserted when we walk in except for a 20 something behind the desk, though it’s not much past 8. Steve and I walk through the lobby, having left Shirley in the car to phone home.

“How many rooms?” The clerk asks, barely looking up from his computer. Steve hesitates, glancing at me, and so I answer for him.

“Just one. Two beds?” I gently crowd him away from the desk. I doubt that any of us want to be alone. I don’t. And I don’t like the image of Steve sitting alone in a cold hotel room while Shirley and I share a room. I pay for the rooms with my credit card, feeling Steve hovering nearby. I’m sure he wants to pay, but he doesn’t say anything when I hand the clerk my card. 

The room isn’t bad, and Shirley doesn’t argue about the three of us sharing a room. We haven’t since we were kids, and I can’t actually remember the last time. Shirley and I shared a bedroom until she went to college, but the last time the three of us all slept in the same room must have been on one of the vacations with Aunt Janet as a kid. We went to the beach when I was around 13 and the three of us shared a room, the twins sharing with Aunt Janet because she said they were too young to be without an adult. I had loved it. Shirley and Steve hadn’t treated me like a kid that trip, letting me tag along with them, the three of us staying up late every night even though we didn’t hang out together that much at home. It was a good memory, a rare one that didn’t end with fighting or hurt feelings. 

I sit down on one of the beds and my siblings sort of awkward mill in the entrance way for a few moments, hovering. It’s late, but not so late we can immediately go to sleep. Finally Steve clears his throat, jerks his chin towards the bathroom.

“I’m going to shower. I feel disgusting.” He pulls his shirt away from his body and makes a face when he looks down at it. “I wish we had some clothes to change into.” He mutters. When he shuts the door, Shirley comes and sits next to me. 

“What did Kevin say?” I ask. Shirley shrugs.

“Not that much. He’s fine with us staying here for the night, but said the kids had some questions. I talked to them some, they seemed okay when I said we should be back tomorrow. Kevin said he was glad Luke was safe. That we all were.” She swallows hard, blinking down at her lap. “I told him about Dad, earlier. He said he would get his body sent to one of the funeral homes we have a relationship with.” 

“You’re not going to do it?” I’m surprised, but relieved. She shouldn’t have done the embalming for Nell, and now Dad so soon after.

“No. I-I don’t think I can.” Her voice breaks and she laces her fingers together and squeezes hard, her knuckles going white. I lean over so our shoulders are pressed together.

“They’ll do a good job. He’d understand. He’d want what's best for you.” Shirley nods, sniffs. There’s a pause and I think about if I should bring up her affair. It’s not a good time, but she probably needs to talk about it, and is it ever a good time? I bite down at my lip, indecisive. Shirley interrupts my thoughts.

“I’m going to tell Kevin when we get back. Once we can be alone.” She blurts out. 

“It’ll be okay. You’ll get through it. Kevin is… he will understand. I think you just need to he open with him, how you’ve felt since then. Why you did it.” Shirley nods, resting her head on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry. About everything. What I assumed, how I reacted. I can’t remember if I actually apologized, before. With everything.” She huffs out a laugh.

“I’m sorry too.”

 

* * *

 

After Steve finishes showering, coming out wrapped in towels, he offers to do laundry for everybody. We spent an awkward hour huddled under towels and the bedcovers, watching tv and Shirley orders pizza. By the time the clock reads nine, we are all relatively clean and smell less than we did before, lounging on the beds in blissfully clean clothes. I had only been persuaded to put my pants back on when Steve promised he wouldn’t argue if I slept without them - there was only so much I could sleep with jeans on. 

“I know you want to know exactly what happened last night.” Steve starts without any prompting. I had been on my phone idly scrolling through an article a colleague had forwarded me, but dropped it on the bed. Shirley starts too, and we share a look. Steve doesn’t see it because his eyes are fixed on the TV though the only thing playing is a commercial for a diabetes drug. “And I...I think I want to tell you. I mean. It’s not only that you should know because you’re involved. I don’t… I don’t want to be the one holding these secrets.” He swallows hard, wrings his hands together hard enough I can hear his skin rasping. Finally, he looks up at the two of us. His mouth is pressed into a hard line, but I can’t read his face. He almost looks angry, but there’s no anger in his voice. His words are measured and slow, the pauses obviously him searching for the right words. “But I can’t do this twice, and Luke needs to know as much as anybody. He deserves to be here for this conversation. Is that okay?” He asks, and his voice breaks on the last word and I realize the face he was making was him holding back tears. He drops his head and wipes at his face. Shirley is sitting down next to him on his bed before I’ve fully realized she’s moved away from my side. 

“Okay. We can wait. You can tell us all together.” She hesitates for a moment but then puts her arm over his shoulder. Though he’s bigger than her, he looks small somehow, his shoulders hunched. “Whatever it is… it’ll be alright. We can figure it all out together.” She promises. 


End file.
